💎 Will BTC Ordinals outshine ETHs ETF?

🗞 Market commentary.

A grand Friday morning to you fellow market participant,

‘They won’t trap me' is the last echo heard, as BTC obliterates the final few bears and high-fives $38,000. Yes... BTC may just be on its way to Forty Thousand United States Dollars before we know it.

It's looking like the ETF narrative is indeed our ticket to a roaring, green Q4. After all, this particular ETF attempt has the greatest chance of approval ever and if Gensler delays it until the very last moment, it will provide us with narrative jet fuel lasting at least until January 10th, when the final decision deadline awaits us. 

After breaking the resistance around 35K, BTC will now likely attempt to establish support, and if consolidation occurs, then it pays to closely watch the TOTAL 3 chart, which shows, mildly speaking, potential. Sooner or later the Bitcoin gains trickle down, as is tradition.

The gaming sector along with AI is currently perhaps the strongest branch of our favourite crypto market. The Bittensor project confirms the rule ‘what's hard to get is worth getting’.

Illuvium is preparing a megalomaniacal start on the Epic Games platform, which means that from November 28th, we will have the first opportunity to evaluate the success of an AAA game coming to the scene from the crypto space, a real litmus test for the industry. Hot on its heels, the gaming platform Immutable is heard announcing a partnership with gaming giant UbiSoft. As you can see, the gaming sector is heating up, and it's heating up damn fast.

Last but not least, the slandered (lately mainly from the Manlet side of the aisle) ETH/BTC ratio shows strong effort exactly when it's needed - Nasdaq files for BlackRock’s proposed iShares Ethereum Trust ETF. Even the NFT market, which was limp the whole year, shows a strong pulse, and we can see that in plentiful market buys and bids on Crypto Punks reaching as high as $1.7M.

A moment of euphoria or just the first step? Steady lads… 

🤓 In today’s email.

• Degen corner. Ordinals are(n't) Dead

• DeFi insights. 14 unmissable insights

• ICYMI. Lybra Finance deep dive, new Still Early episode with Coop, and bull case for Immutable

• Tweet of the day. rektiomedes, we deserve this

• And finally. What are you up to little Doge?

🔥 Degen corner.

Ordinals are(n't) Dead

Elon Musk, the maestro of market narratives, has been stirring the pot again. Last week, we mentioned Elon's kickstarting of the Bitcoin NFT sector caused by his statement on the JRE podcast that the only real NFTs are those inscribed into the blockchain, including the image itself, effectively describing the nature of Ordinals. Besides Elon, exchanges such as Binance, Kucoin, and Gate are now voicing their plans to list BRC-20 tokens, i.e., the first fungible tokens on Bitcoin.

The claim that Ordinals are leaving the bottom is now supported both by the view of on-chain activity and trading volumes of the markets, currently surpassing the Ethereum NFT sector (if you include BRC-20), as well as by remembering that the Ordinals sector has been one of the most hated from its inception. And we all know that the most hated crypto pumps the best...

It's quite possible that now is the time to start playing, and therefore, it's necessary to pull out the map of the current Ordinals sector:

First, let's compare the market cap of Ordinals with the NFT sector on Ethereum so that we can imagine extreme price targets bordering on delusion suitable for mental HODL support: it's about a $240M difference against $9 billion. Right after that, we want tools suitable for entering the terrain: bookmark the marketplace Magic Eden, Ordinals explorer Ord.io, portfolio tracker Ninja Alerts (interesting PFP collection coming from them by the way), and Xverse or Unisat wallet in the browser. For bedtime reading, save the Ordinals Handbook.

The Ordinals ecosystem is half similar to the NFT scene on Ethereum and half completely different. The PFP scene here works similarly, with the current "Punks of Ordinals" being frogs from a typical 10K collection of Bitcoin Frogs. Also, Ordinals Maxi Biz (2.1K supply) has been established as a respected PFP of the Ordinals community since Q1.

The difference from Ethereum, for example, are the 'Sub10K' PFP micro-collections - since each NFT created on Bitcoin is numbered in order, the order and age of the NFT play a role in the eyes of collectors. The Sub10K club includes several PFP collections: Ordinal Punks, Cyber Pepes, Punks on Bitcoin, and Inscribed Pepes. 

You can find a full list of Sub10K collections here. Sub10K can be considered essentially the first 10K collection on Bitcoin, containing both random NFTs and collections similar to Ether Rocks (Ordinal Tulips) and the mentioned PFP collections.

Another anomaly is rare sats, from which one can simply expect absolutely irrational behavior of collectors trying to get the rarest on-chain gem, such as the first sat mined by Nakamoto or the first sat of the first halving. The rarity of Rare Sats is easily understood in the Magic Eden market and here in the Ordinals guide.

You can also look here, into the Ordinals guide. Finally, we have the old good fungible shitcoins - BRC-20s. The current "Bitcoin of ERC-20s" is the first "memesat" ORDI, which Binance listed this week. A quick scan of the BRC-20 list will reveal that it is essentially another on-chain shitcoin market, and its behavior will be similar to that of Ethereum - financialization of attention-grabbing power, where community basically equals fundamentals.

As for accounts to follow to learn daily about Ordinals, you cannot miss with Leonidas, BitGod, or the main man Casey Rodarmor himself, who is behind all of this. And if you really wish to fall deep into the Ordinals rabbit hole, join the Ordiscord, Rare Satoshi Society, or Sub10K Club. Enjoy!

👌 Recommendation of the day.

But before we get to today’s DeFi insights a quick word from our friend Subli DeFi from The Optimist.

The 🔴 Optimist is the one & unique Newsletter covering DEFI on the OP Stack, with a specific focus on the Optimism Superchain. From Optimism governance & tech updates, through project research, onchain analysis, podcasts (with notes) with projects, up to farming/airdrop strategy, The Optimist will soon become your must-read of the week (after blocmates of course).

👀 DeFi insights.

The important bits.

• Redacted Cartel (DeFi) - Announcing expansion to Binance chain, targeting new markets for Hidden Hand - read

• Lybra (LSD) - Phase one of Lybra Wars is kicking off with Lido offering additional incentives - read

• Vertex (DEX) - Token launch planned for November 20th - read

• Premia Blue (Options) - Liquidity mining incentives are live and offering juicy APRs - read

• Shrapnel (Gaming) - Announces Layer Zero partnership & token release - read

• IntentX (DEX) - Announces open beta coming in 7 days - read

• Magic Eden (NFT Market) - Announcing partnership with Yuga Labs - read

• Swell (LSD) - TVL crossed $100M as Swell prepares to enter the re-staking sector - read

• Lens Protocol (Web3 Social) - v2 on Ethereum mainnet - read

• Dopex (Options) - Introducing long awaited v2 - read

• Aurory (Gaming) - Announcing major releases planned for Q4 - read

• Curve (DeFi) - Talks about expansion plans Binance chain & Venus protocol - read

• Thena (DeFi) - Reaching #2 highest volume of all Binance Chain DEXs - read

• DYDX (DEX) - Launches staking - read

📰 DeFi news.

Even more important bits.

• Layer 2 activity booms as weekly active wallets reach ATH  - read 

• BlackRock files for Ethereum spot ETF, confirmed by Nasdaq - read

• Circle releases v2.2 with account abstraction and security improvements for USDC - read 

• Flashbots co-founder introduces plans for a new Telegram bot called ‘Alfred’ - read 

• Controversial Arbitrum proposal passed with plan to pay consultants $1.3M salaries - read 

• Kraken to launch Layer 2 chain, following in Coinbase’s footsteps - read 

• Gary Gensler says FTX could be rebooted if done within the law - read 

• French regulators want to ‘overhaul’ smart contracts, to protect users and create ‘safe zones’ - read 

🫠 ICYMI.

Life gets busy so here’s what you’ve missed.

For the full list click here →

🐥 Tweet of the day.

To save you doom scrolling.

rektiomedes hits the spot with a victory lap song, as we pump through the FTX crash's first anniversary. We back.

🦍 And finally…

One thing is certain: there cannot be a true bull market or altseason without DOGE making a dramatic entrance with several significant green candles (even though as some say, for the sake of our industry, it rather shouldn’t). Is our beloved Doge gearing up to do what it always does?

Not only is it likely, but there's also an interesting narrative forming around the king of memecoins. In our last newsletter, we mentioned Elon Musk's plans to transform Twitter (X) into a comprehensive financial platform. Elon himself emphasizes the idea that “You won’t even need a bank if you have an X account”. Does that sound familiar? 

Doge fits into this scenario as seamlessly as a degen clicks a green button, but is there any real substance to this? On closer inspection, the Dogecoin Foundation is currently advised by Jared Birchall, who is also the head of Elon’s family office and CEO of Neuralink. But there's more. On the Dogecoin Foundation Github, there's a section named RadioDoge, a project self-described as a “project committed to advancing financial inclusion for the 1.7 billion unbanked people in the world”.

It’s easy to imagine that Elon Musk's ego is sky-high, and with that in mind it seems unlikely he would settle for just BTC and ETH integration with X. Why would he, when there’s an entire blockchain that he can claim as his own and have his team work on exclusively, right? 

Also, don’t forget about the literal real-life Doge Moon mission planned for January 12th, 2024. An ETF and Dogecoin narrative leading up to January? That’s hard to resist…

🤝 A final word.

A quick word from our super awesome sponsors who help us make this all possible...

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